If you or your business would like your own email address, using your own domain name, but don’t have your own mail host or mail server or maybe your having trouble finding an affordable solution to fighting spam then why not use GMail?! Not only does GMail provide some of the worlds best spam protection for free but you can easily access your emails from anywhere through a mail client, on a mobile device or a standard web browser. You can also gain from the additional features Google provide such as Google calendars, documents, chat, etc… or if you prefer the administrator can even restrict access to these features.

What’s required?

Before we kick things off it’s important to note you WILL require access to:

1. Domain DNS – To update MX records and if desired to add a CName record (which will be used to allow access via a domain name of your choice e.g. email.techhack.co.uk)
2. Domain Web Host – To authenticate ownership of the domain (Although an alternative method is available)

I am going to assume that you already own your domain and have permission to manage it.

To use this free service provide by Google you will also be required to register for a Google Apps account!

‘MX’ records – These control where your email goes. The ‘priority’ field in the MX records governs the order in which mail servers are tried in case one is unavailable. The lower the number, the higher the priority. An MX with a priority of ’10′ would be tried before one of ’20′. The highest priority one must be the one that ultimately accepts the mail, not one that will relay it on elsewhere.

‘CNAME’ records – ‘CNAME’ (canonical name) records are a pointer to another name already in DNS. A CNAME is always relative to the current domain unless it ends with a full stop (.), then it is known as “fully qualified”.

Some reasons why you should do this

As you are probably already aware Google is one of the largest corporation out there! For good reason to they provide an excellent standard of service! Some great quirks we get from using Google as our mail server include:

• Low cost – No need to buy addition hardware (server) or software (just use any browser)
• No need to update, it’s all done for you!
• Universal access using any browser
• Ability to connect with IMAP or POP
• 99.9% uptime!
• Huge amounts of storage available
• Dependant on implementation – May be no need to worry about email backups
• Availability of additional features such as Calenders, IM chat, etc
• World class spam filters
• Oh and if I forgot to mention… if your only using the standard Google Apps account (<25 Users) it’s completely free!

How?

I have split this guide of how to use Gmail to manage your email into a four short sections

• First: Creating & verifying your Google apps account
• Second: Setting up Google mail
• Third: Creating your email webaccess domain e.g. email.techhack.co.uk
• Fourth: Updating your MX records

First: Creating & verifying your Google apps account

Let start off by creating ourselves a Google Apps account

1. Go to Google Apps and click ‘Get Started’

Google Apps - Standard Edition Get Started

2. You should then be asked to enter two things:

1. Are you the Administrator or an End-user of the domain… I should hope Administrator otherwise your flying solo for the rest of this guide…
2. Your domain name, I would enter techhack.co.uk

Google Apps - Enter domain name

3. You will now be asked to fill in some personal information… I’ll leave this one to you!

4. Admin creation! This will create an account which will be used to manage the mail accounts, add users, add groups, change passwords, etc… but not really ever used sending/receiving mails. This account can be called anything you desire, admin or administrator instantly springs to mind however if your a tad over security concious you may wish to have this something a little different to give the forces of evil an extra hurdle! But remeber to keep this something your going to remember yourself!

5. Next Google requires that you verifiy owernership of the domain you claim to have! Fair enough really I think! This can be performed two ways! They advise the first way, but if for some reason you do NOT have access to your web host to place files on there then no need to panic jsut yet we can fiddle around with the DNS records instead!

The first way, as shown below, requires placing a file on our web server called googlehostedservice.html with the code google provide you with inside. This can be created with any simple text editor and doesn’t require any markup language at all!

Select the ‘Upload an HTM file to yourdomain.eu’ and click continue. A code will then be provided by Google which will be placed into googlehostedservice.html. Place this file on your web server and click ‘Verify’

Google Apps - Verify Account HTML upload

Alternatively you can verify by changing your DNS records. To do this select the ‘Change yourdomain.eu CNAME record’ and click continue. A code will then be provided by Google which will be used as your CNAME pointer

Google Apps - Verify Account CNAME record

Log into your DNS registor and click something to the effect of ‘Manage DNS’.

Add a new entry which should be ‘ your Google code > CNAME > google.com’. This will point googleCode.yourdomain.com to the Google servers. Once this has been set click ‘Verify’

Note: You may have to wait around 10 minutes for the DNS record update to take effect

DNS - CNAME record

Second: Setting up Google mail

Great now we’ve created and verfied our Google Apps account, lets set it up!

6. Log into Google Apps

1. Entering first your domain name
2. Secondly selcting ‘Manage this domain’

Google Apps - Account sign in

This will take you to your Google managed domain mail login. Login with the Administrators account we named and created earlier.

Google Apps - Account domain sign in

7. Here we could spend as much time as we like, playing around to our hearts content, with different settings and options. But for now let’s just glance over the bits that are most critical to us!

Lets start by adding users! Select the ‘Create new users’ link and follow the wizard… follow it through it’s quite self explanatory! Asking for users first/last name, username and password and it’s also possible to add them into different groups here, but I’ll let you discover that for yourself!

Google Apps - Add user

8. Next click on the domain settings tab, and lets take a look at a few settings.

Google Apps - Domain settings

1. Check your default language for users
2. Check your default time zone for users
3. I would advise enabling SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) – If you enable SSL connections, Google will force HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) when your users access most services in Google Apps. The advantage of SSL is added security for your users.

Third: Creating your email webaccess domain e.g. email.techhack.co.uk

True, this short section could have been placed in the previous section. But I think it’s an important option and also one everyone may not wish to perform! After all there is no need to make emails moer accessible via the web browser if your users are going to be using there emails via a mail clients.

9. To change your URL for email, click the Service Settings tab and select the Change URL link.

Google Apps - Service settings

You will be taken to a new screen, as shown below, select the second option, and enter a word here your would like to access your email at. For example I have used mail to log into mail at the address mail.techhack.co.uk

Google Apps - Change URL

Note: If you do choose to do this, make sure you DON’T forget step 11!

Fourth: Updating your MX records

10. The final step! We’ve finished for now with the Google side of things! I leave this step till the end to allow people to continue to use your current mail system until the new one is ready. This step involves altering the MX Records (controlling where your email goes!).

As with the CNAME step you may or may not have carried out earlier in attempt to verify ownership of your domain, log into your DNS registor and click something to the effect of ‘Manage DNS’.

Note: You may wish to write down your current MX Record entries incase for some reason you wish to revert back to your old mail server setup!

Clear any entries you have in here and then add the following servers in place, not forgetting there priority. The ‘priority’ field in the MX records governs the order in which mail servers are tried in case one is unavailable.

• ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.               1
• ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.       5
• ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.     10
• ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.       15
• ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.       20
• ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.       25
• ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.       30

Note: You may have to wait several hours for the DNS record update to take effect

DNS - MX record

11. (Optional Step – Only required if step 9 was completed) An additional step you may consider, is to add a CNAME record to allow your users to find their mail by entering mail.yourdomain.com into a browser! I have done this myself to allow myself to access my email at mail.techhack.co.uk

Log into your DNS registor and click something to the effect of ‘Manage DNS’.

Add a new entry which should be ‘ mail > CNAME > ghs.google.com’. This will point mail.yourdomain.com to the Google servers.

Again uou may have to wait several hours for the DNS record update to take effect

DNS - CNAME record